Everybody Loves A Hero
by Seanchaidh
Summary: With speculation abounding regarding the possible cast of the new spin-off "Primeval: New World", I got an idea in my head for what I'd write and whom I'd cast. I hope you enjoy it & that I get the time to at least introduce all the main characters. I know the new spin off is Canadian: mine is American so there less chance of them clashing and I can have a free hand.
1. Chapter 1: Matty

**Everybody Loves A Hero**

(Primeval American Style!)

**Main Cast:**

Matty Wilder ... Eric Balfour

Melanie Kowalski ... Amy Acker

Valerie Kane ... Jennifer Beals

Fletcher Malloy ... Jensen Ackles

John Foster ... Alex Carter

**Chapter 1: Matty**

It was a long way down.

It wouldn't be fun if it wasn't.

Matthew Horatio Wilder knew better than to consider the possible outcomes of a fall from this height. He had climbed cliffs and canyons in every continent on earth, including Antarctica, as part of one geological survey or another, but the one climb he had always wanted, the one he had promised himself he would get round to when he had the time, was the one he was doing now. It was the Grand Canyon, Arizona.

This climb was just for fun. There were no rock samples to be taken, no laser measurements to be precisely noted down. Even without the usual scientific field work, though, he'd already been climbing for hours. The top of the canyon was in view, but a ledge where he could rest his aching muscles was closer. He worked his way sideways and anchored himself in, unhooking the water flask from his belt and drinking deeply once he was sure the cams were holding.

When the metal flask slipped out of his grip he swore and looked down, expecting to see the bright blue canister bounce gracefully from rock to rock as it tumbled towards oblivion.

It didn't.

Instead, Matty Wilder found himself staring at a pulsating yellowish light that blocked his view of the canyon floor. It hadn't been there before. He would have noticed it as he climbed. It wasn't an optical illusion from the canyon floor either: there was nothing down there that could cause such an thing and the rock wall protruded too much for a direct line of sight downwards anyway.

The sound of metal scraping on rock brought Matty's attention back to his climbing gear with a sudden shock: the cams were moving. Although locked in position, the metal anchors were now gouging deep wounds out of the rock face, like fingers being dragged slowly through sand on a beach. Matty looked down at his kit belts: the metal wires, cams and carabiners were dangling towards the light as though they were being pulled. In fact they were being pulled: he was sure of it now.

Between the extra weight pulling him downwards and the extraordinary behaviour of the anchoring cams, Matty decided it was time his rest stop was over. He found new handholds and footholds, then released the cams.

It was the worst thing he could have done.

Without the aid of the cams, the attraction of the metal climbing tools to the light was enough to drag him down. He lost his grip quickly and fell backwards. At any moment he expected his body to come into sharp and painful contact with the rock wall below.

That moment never came.

Instead, Matty found himself floating in the midst of the light.

"I'm dead," he muttered aloud. "I have hit my head, died instantly and this is the bright light all those near-death-experience dudes and weird psychic spook babblers go on about."

Something cold hit Matty's outstretched hand and he looked round above him. The blue enamelling of his metal water flask gleamed brightly at him in response. He looked at his tool belts. Every piece of metal on the belts was pointing vaguely upwards, into the centre of the light. Matty frowned. Opening and reaching into a zipped pocket, he pulled out a compass and held it horizontal above his face. The needle was definitely not pointing North. He turned the compass on its side and watched as the needle pointed a wavering course straight into the heart of the light.

"It's magnetic," he murmured, rotating the compass and watching the needle ignore the traditional readings entirely.

Whatever else the light may be, Matty could be sure of two things. For one thing, the light was definitely producing a magnetic field, or the magnetic field was producing it. For another, gravity was still having some effect, otherwise he'd be right in the centre of the thing by now. He watched his flask float by above him again. It certainly seemed to be orbiting around a central point. It seemed he had two choices: either stay in perpetual orbit around the light, like his flask, or lose the iron-rich tool belt and take his chances with the fall. No, wait there was a third option: he could try and find the rock wall again first, then lose the tool belt.

Moving felt something like what he'd imagined astronauts went through, or possibly deep sea divers. After a few failed attempts, he managed to roll over and turn round, so that his head, rather than feet, was at the end near where he figured the wall should be. He reached out a hand in front of him, stretching out in the direction of the rock wall. Nothing.

A few awkward swimming-like manoeuvres brought him closer to where the wall should be.

Still nothing.

He should definitely have been within reach by now, he was sure. Had he turned round too far? Had he fallen further out than he'd thought? No, he was sure he hadn't. He could picture the light from above clearly: there wasn't that much space within it. He must have got turned around. He tried a different direction.

Still nothing.

Half an hour or more passed, he couldn't be sure how long exactly, and still Matty couldn't find the wall. There was only one thing for it: he would have to lose the tool belt without any handholds or footholds to fall back on.

He kept one hand firmly gripping the belt as he unbuckled it. As first, nothing happened; then Matty realised that the belt was acting like a cradle, supporting his weight from below him as well as above. He rolled sideways, out of the loop of magnetised metal, and fell sharply downwards. Once again, the tool belt broke his fall, winding downwards with him as he fell and gradually slowing his descent until he felt his body bounce gently upwards and settle at a new level. He hung there in the open air, dangling from the tool belt by one hand, his jaw hanging loose in wonder.

The fall had taken him out of the glare of the light. He could see his surroundings once more. The rock wall was nowhere to be seen, either before him or behind him. Neither was the Grand Canyon.

The landscape that stretched out before Matty now was definitely still Arizona, geologically anyway. The composite layers of reds, browns and oranges were still vibrantly visible in the steep, water-eroded bank of a narrow river a short distance away. Matty looked down. The drop was survivable. If he landed right he might not even break anything.

He let go of the belt.

The force of bare rock hitting his feet and ricocheting through his ankles hurt, but nothing snapped. Matty straightened up and looked around him, looking up at the light just in time to see the tail of the tool belt disappear upwards. There were one or two other items still attached to his person that were trying to do the same, so he made his way cautiously towards the river, away from the magnetic field.

The eroded layers of riverbank looked familiar. Matty checked his zipped pockets for his phone and started taking pictures. The stratigraphy was just like that of the upper layers of the canyon, but the topology was completely different. It was as though he was looking at the Grand Canyon in its very infancy.

But that was anything up to seventeen million years ago.

And time-travel was impossible.

Wasn't it?


	2. Chapter 2: Fletcher

**Chapter 2: Fletcher**

The sun bore down on Matty like an interrogators lamp in the midst of the Cold War. The land around him, however, bore no other resemblance to the America he had grown up in. Beyond him, on either side of the river, stretched mile upon mile of grassland. Grassland that looked more at home in the veldts of Africa than the dry canyons of North America. A rustling behind him drew a reflex spin from the young geologist. There were no angry cavemen hovering, spears ready to strike. There were no dinosaurs towering over him, waiting to tear his fragile body to shreds. There wasn't even his old Harvard professor, ready to tear his even more fragile thesis to shreds. There was just more grassland.

Silent.

Still.

Grassland.

An explosion of movement knocked Matty off his feet. Someting like a pig charged past his knees, bringing him down. An elegant shape flew over him with the lithe leap of a cat. Matty rolled to his side. The yellowish blur collided with the pig-thing. They tumbled together in a kaleidoscope of sandy colours. The blur resolved itself into a shape. Blood stained its muzzle. It was a cat. A long, lean cat. Something like a cheetah. But they had never been found in America, right?

Matty realised he was holding his breath and let air escape slowly, steadily, never taking his eyes off the cat as it sat on its prey, watching life drain from the pig-thing's eyes as it kept its killer grip firm. The creature was dead, and to the victor the spoils. Whatever it had killed, the cat would eat well tonight.

A movement behind him made Matty freeze. Were there others waiting for their turn to feed. He kept his eyes fixed on the cat as it flew suddenly sidewards and started to bleed. Footsteps erupted from every direction. The cat had been killed for Matty's protection. Hands dragged him upwards, unseeing, unthinking and carried him off to a rapidly shrinking light.

Silence tugged at Matty's ears as the light surrounded him, then noise pushed in rudely as darkness descended. When his vision reclaimed it's grasp on realisty, Matty found himself lying flat on his back inside a high-ceilinged, windowless room. A vault might be more accurate, if there had been anything here worth banking.

A hand thrust itself into his field of vision and Matty grabbed it, pulling himself into a sitting, then standing, position. He looked around him at the ring of army fatigues encircling him. His eyes came back to rest on the guy whose hand and arm was still supporting his own. The ensignia on his shoulder marked him out as a captain.

"Scotch or Bourbon?" asked the captain.

"Scotch," said Matty.

"What'll you have with it?"

"Answers."

"Wise man."

Matty remembered almost nothing of the journey to the office. It could have been upstairs, downstairs, along a corridor or just in the next room. What he did remember was the size of the measure of Scotch he had been handed and the look on the face of the guy who had handed it to him. He took a large swig and coughed as the alcohol stung his throat.

The captain was young, maybe around Matty's own age, just past 30. The badge on his arm showed a black sword on a red, arrowhead-shaped background. It wasn't one Matty recognised, but then he had never been much of a fan of the military. Green, cat-like eyes bore down on him from across the desk. The captain was shorter than Matty, but stockier. He was fairly sure he had a chance in an arm-wrestling match, but military training would give this guy the edge in any fight between them. Whatever he had gotten himself into, he was here for the duration.

"You want answers, you'll have to ask some questions," said the captain.

Matty nodded, slowly, taking another sip of the whisky.

"Who are you?"

"Captain Fletcher Malloy."

"Who do you work for?"

"US Government."

Obvious answer. Matty rolled his eyes, sipped, and tried again.

"What regiment?"

"Delta force."

"What is your mission?"

"Classified."

Well, Matty hadn't really expected to get anywhere with that. He sipped again to give himself some thinking time.

"What just happened?"

"My men and I saved your butt."

"From what?"

"Being eaten."

"By what?"

"Something that's classified."

"Where was I?"

"Same place you started out."

"How did I get here?"

"We brought you."

"How?"

"That's classified."

Matty stopped and thought for a moment, staring at the fixed, poker face across the desk.

"Okay," he said, "one minute I'm part-way down the grand canyon, losing my grip with a fall below me that's not just enough to kill me but enough to send little bits of me flying off in so many different directions that my own mother would have difficulty recognising the remains, the next I'm lying in grasses watching a scene out of a national geographic film while a group of special forces dudes drag me through some blinding light to a military bunker somewhere, yet you're telling me that I never left the grand canyon until I came here, but you can't tell me how I came here?"

The captain pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully.

"Sounds about right," he sniffed.

"And you're expecting me to what?" Matty threw his hands out to the side. "Just walk away and get on with my life?"

"Nah, of course not," Captain Fletcher Malloy leant forward, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. "I'm expecting you to pass out first."

Matty looked at the glass in his hand. More than half of the whisky had already been consumed. A dreadful dizziness spun around him as he became aware of the drug's effect. The last thing he remembered before blacking out were those sly green eyes


	3. Chapter 3: Mel

**Chapter 3: Mel**

"You have got to be kidding me!"

The scream of rage echoed up the empty stairwell. A dark, braided head looked down over the banister from the floor above.

"You lose your keys again, girl?"

"I know I had them when I left work," the first voice called up, head still focussed on handbag and hands rummaging fervently. "I remember picking them up. I even remember putting them in here!"

"Which pocket?"

"Huh?"

"You always put them in a pocket, Mel, not the main section."

The rummaging ceased and attention was turned to the zipped side pockets of the bag. A moment later, a set of keys jingled and sparkled in the stairwell lights.

"Ana, you know me far too well!" Mel laughed, looking up finally. "You coming down tonight?"

"Leg's been bad today," Ana shrugged. "Why don't you come up? I got a ridiculously large pizza in the oven, beers in the fridge, ice cream in the freezer and some brand new bluerays that need watchin'."

"Gimme half an hour to get rid of the stench of sweaty reporters and I'll be right there," Mel grinned.

XXXX

It was a little under the half hour when Mel bounced up the stairs to her friend's apartment and opened the door. The open door didn't concern her: she and Ana always left their doors open when they were expecting one another. She made her way through the small hall and into the living area. The open-plan kitchen extended off to one side. A smell of burning pizza came from the oven. Mel hurried over and, grabbing the oven gloves, rescued the pizza from utter cremation.

"D'you forget to set the timer again, Ana?" Mel called, laughing. Putting a frozen pizza in the oven was the closest her friend ever got to cooking, and even that didn't always end well.

Frowning at the lack of response, Mel set the pizza tray down on the hob, depositing the oven gloves next to it, and headed back across to the hall. Ana's bedroom, spare room and bathroom all opened off the short corridor. Worried that her friend's prosthetic leg had caused her to fall and hurt herself, Mel checked each room methodically: first the bathroom, then the bedroom, both spartan in decoration and contents. Finally she checked the spare room: a room that had been given over to punchbags, weights and other training equipment.

The room was in uproar. Half the machines and all the weights were gone, the rest were toppled and dragged across the room. There were gouges in the training mats. Some had obviously been caused by moving machinery: a toppled cross-trainer still lay with one corner tearing through the mat. Other marks were smaller, thinner: like they had been made with a wide knife, or a claw. Stepping carefully, Mel searched the debris for any sign of Ana. She was half-way across the room when she saw them. She froze.

On one of the training mats there were ten clear, narrow, parallel lines that started in two curved arcs and finished very suddenly near the centre of the room. In the very start of one of the lines, Mel could see a fingernail.

XXXX

Time had passed. Mel was still sitting at the kitchen table, the now cold pizza congealing on the hob behind her. The police had turned up, eventually, but only after repeated hysterical descriptions of the state of the training room and a threat to run the story in Mel's paper: something which she, as a fairly junior story chaser and occasional opinion columnist, could in no way come through on should they have decided to call her bluff. Luckily they hadn't.

She had gone through all the necessary details with a uniformed officer, a detective and then a more senior detective. A female uniformed officer had sat with her in silence while the sound of boots moved back and forth in the hall outside. The occasional paper-clad forensics person had entered the living room and kitchen, dusting, spraying, photographing and generally checking that no other person had been present in the flat. Now the police had gone, the detectives had gone, the paper people from forensics had gone, even her silent shadow - the female uniformed officer whose name she had never managed to catch - was now gone. There was just her.

Just her, and Ana's empty flat.

And a pair of army boot standing just at the edge of her vision.

Mel looked up, following the intruder from boots to legs to torso to face. A soldier. Two more soldiers stood a short distance behind him. Something clicked in Mel's head: Ana was ex-army. That was how she had lost her leg.

Mel had only seen Ana in her uniform once, but she remembered remarking on the simple insignia that identified her friend's regiment: a black sword, or dagger, pointing upwards on an upward pointing red arrowhead. No: a spearhead, Ana had corrected her. The same red spearhead patch was clearly visible on the intruder's uniform. Same regiment, then. Mel regarded the soldier in silence for a moment, then decided to ask the question her mind was trying to answer: "Why are you here?"

The soldier pulled a face and smirked a little. "Not the first question most people would ask," he said, stepping over to the table and sitting down opposite Mel. "Most people would ask who I was first."

"I know who you are," Mel replied evenly. "You're from Ana's regiment. You wear the same insignia."

"My aren't you an observant one," the soldier grinned.

"It's my job," Mel tipped her head to one side. "Why are you here?"

"I'm here to find out what happened to Ana," the soldier answered with a nod.

"Did you know her?" Mel asked, not taking her eyes off the soldier's face. "Personally, I mean."

"She was my first lieutenant back when I first made major," he replied. "I led the op where she lost her leg."

"Major?" Mel glanced at the soldier's sleeve, her head tipped again, and frowned. She was no expert on military ranks, but...

"Same op that got me busted back down to captain," the soldier explained, watching her gaze.

"So what do I call you?" Mel asked, bringing her eyes back up to the soldier's face.

"Captain Fletcher Malloy," the soldier said. "But Malloy will do: you're a civilian. Ana used to call me Fletch when we weren't on duty."

"You know her well then?"

Fletch simply nodded and rose. "While we're on the subject of names, what can I call you?"

"Kowalski," Mel replied. "Melanie Kowalski. But Ana used to call me Mel."

Fletch nodded again and help out his hand. "You feel like showing me what the doughnut patrol's left?"

XXXX

There hadn't been much different about the training room when Mel led Fletch through. Just tell-tale traces of fingerprint powder here, the odd droplet of a spray there. She talked the captain through her conversation with Ana and everything she had done in the twenty-odd minutes that followed. She talked him through her arrival at the flat, letting herself in, rescuing the pizza and the futile search for her friend that had culminated in the discovery of the training room.

He had asked questions. She had answered them, mechanically, just as she had when the police had asked them two or three times before. Then, suddenly, a new question intruded on her consciousness, jolting her back to reality and the present.

"Wh-what?" Mel asked, confused.

"Were there any electrical disturbances?" Fletch repeated. "Lights flickering, radios buzzing or losing channels, TVs playing up: that sort of thing."

"What you think this is some kind of poltergeist attack or something?" Mel's eyebrows rose.

"Oh, I only deal with the usual horrors mother nature dreams up," the captain grinned. "Leave all that supernatural nonsense to the big guns."

"Then what?" Mel shrugged. "You obviously have some idea what could have done this. What was it?"

"Were there any electrical disturbances?" Fletch repeated, holding Mel's questioning gaze.

"Not that I noticed," Mel replied, keeping her own gaze steady. "But the only electricity I used was the shower and that was only on for ten minutes max, probably closer to five, and the hair dryer, and that keeps going off and on anyway: I've been meaning to replace it for months."

"And you heard nothing?" Fletch frowned.

"I got water in my ears in the shower," Mel shrugged. "Between that, the shower itself and the hairdryer: no, I heard nothing."

Fletch nodded, his eyes breaking contact with Mel and scanning the room. "I'm gonna leave two of my men here on guard," he said, finally. "I've gotta go meet some tech kid flying in from England with some new toys for my team. Once we've got them, I'll come back. I don't think it'll be much good though."

"So you think she's gone then?" Mel frowned, feeling her breath catch. "I mean for good? You don't think there's even a chance we could find her?"

"Oh, there's always a chance," Fletch admitted. "If there was ever a chance of finding anyone who disappeared like this, I know I'd put my money on Ana being the one to take it."

"You know what this is, don't you?" Mel demanded. "This is what you do, isn't it: you and your team?"

"In a manner of speaking," Fletch shrugged.

"So what is it, then?" Mel folded her arms and stood her ground. "What? Is it secret service stuff? Spies? Terrorists? Monsters under the bed? Aliens? What?"

Fletch raised an eyebrow at the rising volume coming from Mel. "It's none of those," he said, turning to face her. "It is, however, a matter of national security. That means it's classified. That means I can't tell you. I know you care about Ana, I do too, but there's nothing you can do here. You've told me everything you can, so now I suggest that we leave two of my boys here and the rest of us walk you back downstairs then leave. You have told me everything, haven't you?"

"Actually, there is one set of questions you haven't asked me," said Mel, her head tipping quizzically to the side again.

"And what's that?" Fletch breathed.

"You haven't asked me anything about the possibility of an intruder.


	4. Chapter 4: Valerie

**Chapter 4: Valerie**

It had been a slow day at the office for Valerie Kane. It was her first day back on duty and she'd spent it stuck behind a bench filling in forms, filing forms, reading more forms and finally ploughing through the mountain of paperwork that had stacked up in her in tray. Her hand drifted down to her side. The stitches were out. The wound was healing nicely. Her doctor was happy with her progress. The obligatory psych eval had been done and passed. She'd been cleared for duty. It still itched though.

Her thoughts, bored with the sight of yet more paper and longing for a new case to distract her mind, meandered back to her debriefing this morning. It wasn't so much that she had been ordered to keep the details of 'the incident' under wraps: that was normal in her line of work. Nor was it the feeling that somebody higher up was keeping things under wraps even from her: that too was normal. Instead, it was the nagging feeling that something about the whole thing was about to come back and bite her on the ass. Last time it had been a 'small' claw in her side and that had hurt enough.

Sure enough, as the day wore on and the office emptied, she heard a familiar and long awaited tread behind her, followed by a tap on the wall of her cubical.

"You got a minute, Agent Kane?"

Valerie turned on her chair. "Sure Ma'am. Here?"

"My office. We have company waiting."

Valerie rose, wincing, and followed her boss through the maze of cubicles to the enclosed office at the far end of the room. The blinds were already down. As the two women entered, a seated man looked round. He seemed nervous. Valerie noted the glasses hooked into the top of his V-neck sweater, the greying hair, the pad in one hand, mechanical pencil stopped in mid-twirl in the other.

"Agent Kane, please have a seat," her boss began, waving a hand in the vague direction of the only other chair in the office. "I would like you to meet Doctor John Foster. Doctor Foster has consulted for us on a number of occasions previously and has the same clearance level as yourself. You may speak freely before him, and he before you likewise. He is to be your new partner for the duration of the assignment."

"With all due respect, ma'am, isn't it a little fast to be assigning me a new partner?" Valerie frowned. "Mitchell was only buried last Tuesday!"

"Trevor Mitchell was a good man and a good agent," was the dispassionate reply, "but a situation has arisen and the two of you are the people most suited to the job. Like it or not, agent, we need you on this assignment, you need a partner, and Doctor Foster is, at present, the best man for the job. He's not had your training, I'll admit, but he has a unique insight into the case that is essential for its handling."

"I-I know I don't seem like much, Agent Kane," stammered the voice of the good doctor beside her. "A-and I know I cannot replace your previous partner, nor am I trying to, but I would like to help you prevent what happened to him happening to anyone else, if possible."

Valerie Kane looked back to her boss. "So that's the assignment? One government agent and one scientist on a giant monster hunt to save the world? I know we've had our funding cut, but isn't that a bit resource deficient?"

"On the contrary," said the older woman. "You will find you have an entire team and indeed and entire building at your disposal. You may, by now, have realised that we have been aware of the problem for some time, as have our counterparts across the pond. They have been good enough to share some of their knowledge with us. Although we do not believe for a second that we know everything they know, it has been enough to construct some... devices that will help you, and enough information to allow the doctor here to begin researching others."

"Help us do what, exactly?" Valerie asked.

"Study the incursions. Contain their... impact. Perhaps work out how to control, or even stop, the phenomenon altogether." Two slim folders were passed over the desk to Valerie and the doctor. "You will find everything you need to know in here. Some you already know, some Doctor Foster already knows. By the end of it, you will each know the same facts at least. On the first page you will find the co-ordinates of your new base of operations, followed by a list of personnel assigned to the project. All requisitions will come to myself alone, through you, Agent Kane. I expect a weekly report, and not from the new stations. I suggest, if you have finished dealing with your overflowing desk, you make your way there and familiarise yourself with the details. I should add that, while you will be overseeing the assignment as a whole, Doctor Foster has authority over research and development, and any other scientific issues. You may wish to stop off at home and pack a bag: there are sleeping quarters there for all staff and I believe your room is quite spacious. They were only meant for occasional use, but I do believe some of the staff have made them quite personal."

Valerie remained silent for a moment, her mouth paused in the middle of framing her next word. She took a breath and picked up the folder. She nodded silently and levered herself upright, tightening her jaw against the pain in her side. She looked over at her new partner. He had copied her actions and was watching her patiently.

"I'm taking my car," she said. "Do you need a lift?"

"I'm good," he replied. "I'll meet you there."

She nodded and left.

"Are you sure you are ready for this doctor?"

Doctor John Foster turned back to the enigmatic woman seated on the far side of the desk.

"I don't think anyone is ready for this, ma'am," he replied, "But I think I at least know what I'm not ready for!"

XXXX

Valerie opened the door to her apartment and headed for the bedroom. She already had a basic overnight bag in the back of her car, but all agents had that so she had to believe the suggestion had meant she would be needing a more substantial kit bag. She hauled a case out from the top of the wardrobe packing sensible shoes and a pair of boots first, stuffed and padded with a few personal items. The usual kit list went on top of that, although she took care to include some all weather clothes as well as her spare suit and a series of well folded shirts. It would be safe to assume from the information she had that she would have to be prepared for any eventuality, so she packed accordingly and for a long stay.

Half an hour later she was on her way. The co-ordinates had been programmed into her sat nav and the quickest route selected. It was going to be a long drive, so she had stocked the car with food, coffee, water and her iPod. The rise and fall of the prelude to Suite Bergamasque drowned out the gentle drone of the engine and the rumble of passing traffic. She turned out of her street and headed East.

By the time she first saw her new base, she had almost exhausted her entire Debussy collection. It could only be the base: there were no other buildings within sight. At first glance it looked like a ruined church, the setting moon casting an eerie light through an empty bell tower. Sure enough, the sat nav led her to the tall double door of the church. A weathered statue at the apex of the doorway, and a faded sign on the door itself, proclaimed the building dedicated to Saints Christopher and Francis. An odd pairing, she thought, but perhaps the more recent, though still abandoned, monastic buildings appended on to the side of the church provided a clue there.

There were no other vehicles visible. Valerie stepped out of the car and walked over to the small door inset into one of the larger ones. She knocked.

Silence.

She tried the handle. It was locked. She knocked again.

She was just about to walk away and make her way round the building when she heard a key in the lock. After a moment of silence, the large double doors swung outward, forcing her to step back. There was nobody pushing them. Valerie raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry, I was talking to the guard," said the still unfamiliar voice of Doctor John Foster from the gloom within. "Bring the car in and I'll show you round."

"You sound like you know the place, doctor," Valerie replied, peering into the darkness.

"I ought to," he said, answering the implicit question. "I helped to design most of it."

Valerie drove into the depths of the darkness. She heard the doors swing shut behind her and paused to look at the interior now illuminated by her car headlights. On one side were a row of identical black vans and SUVs. On the other side was a more sparsely populated row of varied cars. These, presumably, belonged to the staff then. She found a space by a pillar and parked the car, collecting her bag and case before rejoining the doctor, now holding a torch, in the centre of the nave.

"You sure we're not going to get sent to hell for using God's house as a parking lot?" Valerie asked the doctor as he led them towards the right transept.

"As a scientist, I feel I have to fall back on our collective favourite answer and say 'I don't know', Agent Kane," replied Doctor Foster. "But if our motives are pure, I don't see why we should. This is a place of sanctuary. Once it was a sanctuary for Franciscan monks. Now it is a sanctuary for this operation. It keeps us hidden from the outside world, and the less they know of the dangers before us, the better."

Valerie couldn't help notice the stutter and nervousness had faded. The doctor was on home ground now. "Call me Valerie when we're not on duty," she said. "The 'agent' business is for the public's benefit, not mine."

"John," he nodded in reply, opening the door at the end of the transept. "Sleeping quarters are straight ahead, where the monks slept. There are a few shared rooms and one dormitory, the guards use that and are rotated on shifts, so there's always someone sleeping in there. Most of the rest of the staff are scientific or medical and they have the shared rooms and, in the case of our medics, most of the single rooms. We have a single room each. Mine belonged to the Prior, yours to the Abbot, so they each have offices attached. You have another office downstairs in the main building, and I have a lab. Here we are."

He waved the torch at an imposing wooden door. The wood was darkened with age and a suspiciously new lock glinted in the light. She turned the handle and went in. Behind her, John flicked a switch, illuminating the room. Valerie blinked in the sudden light, waiting for her eyesight to readjust. When her vision had cleared she saw a long wooden desk opposite the door, an old bureau on one wall and a tall chest of drawers on the other. There were candlesticks on each of them. Two black rectangles in the wall behind the desk marked the presence of two closely shuttered windows, each with the telltale gleam of metallic modernity. She headed towards the door in the side wall next to the bureau. It opened onto a small, sparsely furnished room with a single bed side-on to the wall, a table with a washstand and mirror, a simple wooden wardrobe and a wooden chair.

"The bathroom is just down the hall. I say bathroom, but there's only a shower. It's shared between everyone in this corridor. That's the two of us and two of the medical staff. It's modern enough: it had to be completely refitted before we moved in. We're lucky. The dorm and the shared rooms are all sharing the old bathhouse. It's been modernised too, but it's still too small for everyone. There is another bathroom at the end of each of the single room corridors, and there are better facilities downstairs of course."

Valerie deposited her bag and case on her bed. "I think it's about time I had the grand tour," she said, turning to face him. "Feel free to start with 'downstairs'!"


End file.
